Trying to solve problems like Maria

Friday night, Live-Music-Loving Companion and I got tickets to the Super Furry Animals’ show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. It should be mentioned that L-M-L Companion and I teeter on the line between hipster and yuppie Brooklyn – living in Clinton Hill means we are equidistant from both assymetrical haircuts and brunch restaurants with stroller parking, generally identify with neither, and occasionally end up somewhere smack in the middle of both. I don’t even know if that makes sense, but let me put it this way – when I asked Jeff if he was free to come with me to trivia at Pete’s Candy Store last week, his reply was “Even if I was free, we’re already going to Williamsburg on Friday. Williamsburg twice in one week is overdoing it,” and then both Saturday and Sunday (more due to laziness than neighborhood burnout) we were goinnnng to go to Carroll Gardens so I could buy clothes and he could buy comics, and we even made it so far as the bus stop on Sunday before sheer apathy for doing stuff set it. We ended up going to the health food store that’s 4 seconds from our apartment, buying some organic cheese and calling it a day. The bus went right past us and we were like, “should we? I don’t know, do you want to? I don’t know, I don’t care. ”

What was I…right, ok so Friday. So we overcame our Williamsburg biases to meet up with Bill and get some smoked meat at the very delicious Fette Sau before the show. I ate pure fat, people. Pure pork belly fat. I started playing with the leftovers and rubbing it into the waxed paper the food came on and Bill referenced the “Window to Weight Gain” from the Simpsons. I felt really bad about eating so much pork belly after that. Too bad neither hipsters nor stroller moms have embraced Muu Muus yet. Soon. Also, just fyi, my jacket still smells like pork and smoke.

So anyway, I reviewed the SFA show for NYM and then spent the rest of the weekend indoors avoiding people by watching practically a full season of Battlestar Gallactica. I know, I never thought that would happen either. It might be safe to say that stranger things have NOT happened, Liz watching a show from the Sci-Fi Network is about as bizarro world as it gets. You win, TV Watching Companion! But alas, it’s pretty frackin’ entertaining aside from the crazy blonde Cylon that I hate everything about. I mean, come on! What alien robot modeling agency did she come from?

Dear readers, I am now a published…person. I won’t say author because my rambling diary entries as a 14 year old weren’t a deliberate attempt at, what, authorship? The Nicaragua diary I kept in 9th grade which I read from at Mortified was chosen as one of the included entries in the latest installment of the Mortified book series, Mortified: Love Is A Battlefield, so I actually have a tag on Amazon now! You can buy it and support the good, childhood-angsty people who put this show together HERE.

And in case you needed more persuasion to buy it, yes, my entry includes this nun picture as well as the picture to end all pictures, the chef hat/bubble wand necklace one that you all know and love.

Theatre-Enthusiast Companion and I saw Edward Albee give an interview at the TimesCenter on Saturday. Have you ever wished to feel more like a 1970’s intellectual New Yorker who lives uptown and calls train lines by their original transit agencies instead of their letter or number signs (“I was waiting for the IRT at Lincoln Center and it never showed so I went to the Drama Bookshop instead!”)? Because if you did wish that, seeing Edward Albee at the TimesCenter would aid in that wish-fulfillment. The audience was full of the intellectual-homosexual-matter-of-factual literati New York is known for and I loved it. There we jokes made at the New York Times‘ expense! I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do – I only ever do the Monday crossword, what do I know!?

Being from Boston, I can understand how people drop their “R”s when speaking. “Pahk the cah”, “Faht in the dahk” (what?), etc. People in New York rarely forget their R’s though, which is why the following email from someone in my office is so unfortunate…

Sent: Wed Jan 09 16:09:15 2008
Subject: Steam Shutdown

Please be aware, Building Management has just advised that they have
schedule an emergency steam station shutdown starting tonight, January
9, at 6:00 pm until 4:00 am January 10, 2008. As a result of this
shutdown, there will be no heat or hot water in our bathrooms, panties,
or coffee stations. After Building Management has completed the
shutdown, they will tour the floors to ensure all systems operate.

My good pals Glennis and Marcy started this thing a while back where ladies could go dance to hits of yesterday and today on Sunday afternoons, ‘neath the glow of a disco ball while wearing (nothing but) leg warmers. At first it was just for them and their friends to get some exercise and listen to cool tunes, but then they put the word out, strangers started showing up and it was a full-fledged THING.

An exercisey, dance party where people could do the Robot and the Roger Rabbit, or if you’re like me, you’d go and pretend you were the “Low Impact Aerobic Guy” from those old exercise shows where one person was always “takin’ it easy” but still on his feet and wearing a sweatband. It was kinda like Curves if the music on in the background at Curves was Jay-Z and M.I.A. and The Blow and Debbie Gibson (pretty sure that Glennis had made that very mix at one point or another). But also totally not Curves because cool New York ladies actually, you know, GO there.

Dance Dance Party Party, or DDPP as we in the know call it, has grown and it’s in a buncha cities all over the place (Providence! Austin! LA! Chicago!) – if you live in one of them, you should totally go.

Last week I heard the story about a six-year-old girl who entered a contest to win Hannah Montana concert tickets. The winning essay she wrote was about how her father was killed in Iraq (and I guess Hannah Montana songs would make things all better). It was all a big lie, and now the mother of the child, the woman who actually WROTE the essay, speaks out about how yeah, maybe it is kind of wrong to, as Matt Lauer put it, invoke the name of a fallen soldier. IN THE NAME OF MILEY CYRUS.
Things have gotten rough for her, she had to close out her MySpace page (The horror! My Top 8! Nooooo!) and move out of her apartment, apparently to a new one without mirrors.

On New Year’s Eve, I coined the next big affirmative phrase, “That’s so bullseye”, thanks to two glasses of champagne and a few minutes playing Wii Darts. Feel free to make it famous but remember you heard it here first.

It’s my first day back at work since December 20th and I’m pretty sure 50% of my company is not here so it’s still pretty vacationy. The only difference is that instead of doing a whole lotta nothing at home while shoveling Milk Duds and Reese’s Peanut Butter Christmas Trees in my face, I’m doing a whole lotta nothing while resolving to eat better (hence a lunch of chick pea salad -the Reese’s Trees are currently being mulched in my colon. Please, like it’s honestly your first poop joke of the year?)

Multi Media Viewing Companion and I saw Sweeney Todd before Christmas (Two Severed Thumbs Up!) and we almost watched the entire series of Veronica Mars, go us! We’re still waiting on Netflix for the last of Season 3. Highly recommended if anyone has two weeks to kill and NOTHING else to do. We also watched The Big Lebowski yesterday and most of Robocop. I had never seen either before (I say I like the Coen Brothers, but when it comes down to it, I haven’t actually seen 80% of their movies and the ones I have seen, while undoubtedly well-made, just aren’t my thing, sorry The Dude). And well, Robocop is pretty hilarious. I told Jeff while we were watching that it’s a movie that needs to be re-shot scene for scene by the cast of The State. I know we already have Reno 911, but Robocop has about 4 parts that Ken Marino should play, should he choose to go the Eddie Murphy-multiple-character route. (P.S. Ken Marino is in Veronica Mars, did you know that? I didn’t! I know, I’m late to the VMars game, as always I buck trends, but you should watch it! If more of us watched it when it was actually on, maybe they would not have canceled it! Oops!) But the reason we watched Robocop in the first place was that as a result of this writer’s strike and/or that it was a holiday, there was nothing else except (no joke) the American MAGIC AWARDS to watch. (If there was no strike, would that have been televised?)

Anyway, even though I quit the gym in December I resolved to be healthier, plus I will read more books so that I will get smarter in the new year. Oh, hey! I just realized I could have read instead of watching Robocop! Oh well! Here’s to more productive use of hindsight in ’08! And don’t forget to keep rockin’ with your bullseye selves in the new year.